Rustaveli, Shota

(166 words)

(12th/13th cent.), has a place in world literature as the greatest Georgian poet, earned by his Vephistqaosani (“The Knight in the Panther’s/Tiger’s Skin”), an epic poem of 1669 four-line stanzas. Hundreds of legends, stage plays, and stories about his life and work bear witness to the central place he holds in the Georgians’ sense of identity. But regarding his life and person – like Homer’s – we have no reliable sources. The territorial epithet tells us little, since there are many places in Ge…